Chapter 5 (Draft): Intersectional Neurodivergence
From my in-progress book, NeuoJustice (Neurodiversity Justice)
Neurodivergence is never experienced in a vacuum. It is lived through bodies that are already situated within social hierarchies, historical legacies, and systems of power. Yet much of the dominant discourse around autism and ADHD has treated neurodivergence as if it were a singular, universal condition, detachable from race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship, and exposure to state violence. This abstraction has shaped research agendas, clinical practice, workplace policy, and even advocacy movements themselves. It has also produced profound harm.
When neurodivergence is discussed without intersection, the distribution of suffering is misrepresented. Disparities are flattened. The most marginalized neurodivergent people disappear from view, while those closest to power become the default reference point. The result is a body of knowledge and a set of solutions that appear inclusive but are, in practice, selective. Neurodiversity justice begins from a refusal of that selectivity. It insists that any honest account of neurodivergent life must grapple with how difference is interpreted and governed differently depending on who is embodying it.
Intersectionality is not an optional lens added for nuance. It is a structural necessity. Neurodivergent harm is not evenly distributed, and it never has been. Autistic and ADHD people who are women, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of color, poor, undocumented, or otherwise marginalized are more likely to be misdiagnosed, punished, disbelieved, excluded, and criminalized. These outcomes are not coincidental. They are produced at the intersection of neurodivergence and systems of domination that determine whose behavior is tolerated, whose distress is medicalized, and whose difference is treated as a threat.
This chapter situates neurodivergence within those systems. It does not treat gender, race, class, or sexuality as secondary identities layered on top of a primary neurological one. Instead, it examines how neurodivergence is interpreted through these categories, and how power shapes the consequences that follow. An autistic shutdown is not read the same way in every body. An ADHD impulsive response does not carry the same risk in every context. Credibility, safety, and access are mediated by social position, not by neurology alone.
Neurodiversity justice requires this analysis because without it, reform efforts fail the people who need them most. Advice that assumes safety, flexibility, or goodwill can place marginalized neurodivergent people in danger. Policies designed around the experiences of resourced populations can intensify surveillance and punishment elsewhere. Movements that center only the most palatable narratives risk reproducing exclusion under the banner of inclusion. Justice demands a more rigorous accounting.
This chapter therefore refuses universalism without context. It rejects one-size-fits-all narratives of resilience, coping, or success. It treats survival strategies not as moral choices, but as responses to constraint. It interrogates who is believed when harm is named, who is dismissed as difficult or unreliable, and who is allowed to exit harmful systems without penalty. It asks how visibility can function as both protection and risk, and how progress for some can coincide with deepening harm for others.
Intersectional neurodivergence is not about fragmentation or competition. It is about accuracy. Neurodivergent lives are shaped by histories of exclusion that predate diagnosis and outlast any individual accommodation. Naming those histories does not weaken the framework. It strengthens it. It allows neurodiversity justice to describe reality as it is, rather than as institutions wish it to be.
What follows is an examination of how intersectional forces shape neurodivergent experience, harm, and resistance. It centers those most often erased from dominant narratives, not as an act of charity, but as a methodological commitment. Justice is not achieved by expanding access for a few while leaving structural hierarchies intact. It is achieved by understanding how those hierarchies operate, and by designing systems that no longer rely on exclusion to function.
Neurodivergence Is Never Singular
Neurodivergence is often spoken about as though it were a single axis of difference, separable from the rest of a person’s life. This framing is convenient. It allows institutions to imagine that accommodation can be modular, that neurological difference can be addressed without disturbing broader systems of power. In practice, this separation is impossible. Neurodivergence is always lived through bodies that are gendered, racialized, classed, sexualized, and situated within specific political and cultural contexts. Treating it as singular distorts both experience and outcome.
The insistence on singularity shows up most clearly in diagnostic and professional discourse. Autism and ADHD are frequently described through lists of traits that are presented as universal, even though those traits were identified through research populations that were overwhelmingly white, male, and middle class. This history matters. When a framework is built on a narrow slice of humanity, it will inevitably misrecognize those who fall outside it. Neurodivergent people whose lives do not resemble the prototype are not absent from reality. They are absent from the model.
This absence has consequences. When neurodivergence is framed as singular, difference is interpreted as deviation from a norm rather than as variation shaped by context. An autistic person who avoids eye contact may be read as socially impaired in one setting and as culturally appropriate in another. An ADHD person whose attention shifts rapidly may be framed as creative in a well-resourced environment and as irresponsible in a precarious one. The behavior does not change. The interpretation does. Neurodiversity justice insists that interpretation is never neutral. It is mediated by power.
Singular framings also obscure how risk accumulates. Neurodivergent traits do not carry the same consequences in all bodies. A white, middle-class autistic person may experience social friction without material threat. A Black autistic person exhibiting the same behavior may face discipline, surveillance, or violence. An ADHD adult with job flexibility may navigate fluctuating attention with relative safety. An ADHD adult living in poverty may lose housing or access to care as a result of missed deadlines or misunderstood interactions. Neurodivergence does not operate alone. It amplifies and is amplified by existing inequalities.
The myth of singular neurodivergence also shapes advocacy priorities. When movements are built around the experiences of those who can most easily be seen, heard, and accommodated, they risk universalizing partial truths. Needs that fall outside that frame are labeled exceptional or complex. Complexity becomes a burden rather than a signal that the framework itself is incomplete. Neurodiversity justice rejects this move. It treats complexity as evidence, not inconvenience.
Understanding neurodivergence as never singular also clarifies why some forms of support appear to work while others fail catastrophically. A workplace accommodation that benefits a resourced autistic employee may be inaccessible to someone without formal diagnosis. A disclosure strategy that is safe for a white neurodivergent person may expose a person of color to retaliation. Advice that assumes legal protection, social capital, or economic cushion cannot be generalized. Neurodiversity justice demands that support be evaluated not by intent, but by impact across contexts.
This analysis also challenges the idea that there is a single neurodivergent community with uniform interests. Neurodivergent people share experiences of mismatch and marginalization, but they do not share identical relationships to power. Pretending otherwise erases internal disparities and reproduces harm within the movement itself. Neurodiversity justice does not seek unity through flattening. It seeks solidarity through clarity.
Seeing neurodivergence as never singular requires abandoning the comfort of simple narratives. It requires acknowledging that some neurodivergent people are protected by whiteness, wealth, citizenship, or conformity, while others are exposed to punishment and precarity. This acknowledgment is not divisive. It is necessary. Without it, justice work risks reinforcing the very hierarchies it claims to oppose.
This section lays the groundwork for what follows. If neurodivergence is always intersecting, then harm, credibility, visibility, and survival must be analyzed through that lens. The question is no longer whether neurodivergent people are accommodated in general. The question is which neurodivergent people are protected, which are disciplined, and why.
Gendered Misrecognition and the Cost of Masking
Gender shapes how neurodivergence is seen, interpreted, and acted upon long before any diagnosis is considered. Autistic and ADHD traits do not enter neutral systems. They enter systems already saturated with expectations about femininity, masculinity, and emotional labor. These expectations determine which behaviors are noticed, which are ignored, and which are punished. As a result, neurodivergent people who are women, femmes, or gender-diverse are not simply underdiagnosed. They are misrecognized in ways that fundamentally alter their life trajectories.
From early childhood, girls and gender-diverse children are often socialized to prioritize relational harmony, compliance, and emotional attunement. They are taught to observe others closely, to anticipate needs, and to suppress expressions of discomfort that might disrupt group cohesion. For many autistic and ADHD children, this socialization intersects with heightened pattern recognition and sensitivity to feedback. Masking becomes not only possible, but expected. Distress is internalized. Confusion is hidden. Exhaustion is normalized.
This masking is frequently misinterpreted as evidence that neurodivergence is absent or mild. In reality, it is evidence of sustained cognitive and emotional labor. Research on camouflaging shows that autistic women and femmes report significantly higher rates of masking than autistic men, along with higher rates of anxiety, depression, burnout, and suicidality. The ability to appear functional does not protect against harm. It accelerates it.
Gendered misrecognition also shapes diagnostic pathways. Autistic traits in women and femmes are often reframed as anxiety, mood disorder, trauma response, or personality pathology. ADHD traits are interpreted as disorganization, irresponsibility, or emotional instability rather than as differences in attention regulation. These misattributions are not benign. They determine which treatments are offered, which supports are denied, and which narratives individuals are encouraged to adopt about themselves. Neurodiversity justice names this process as epistemic harm. When people are given inaccurate explanations for their experiences, they are denied the tools needed to understand and care for themselves.
The consequences of this misrecognition accumulate over time. Many late-identified autistic and ADHD women describe lives shaped by chronic overfunctioning. They meet expectations by expending extraordinary effort, often at the expense of their health. They are praised for being capable, reliable, or high achieving, even as they quietly collapse. Burnout in these populations is not sudden. It is the end point of years spent translating themselves into acceptable forms.
Gendered expectations around emotional labor further intensify harm. Neurodivergent women and femmes are often expected to manage not only their own regulation, but the emotional comfort of those around them. When they fail to perform this labor, they are labeled cold, difficult, or unstable. When they succeed, their labor is invisible. This dynamic leaves little room for authentic expression of need. Neurodiversity justice recognizes emotional labor as a site of exploitation that disproportionately affects gender-marginalized neurodivergent people.
Gender diversity introduces additional layers of misrecognition. Trans and nonbinary neurodivergent people often encounter systems that treat gender variance and neurodivergence as mutually invalidating. Expressions of gender are scrutinized for signs of instability. Neurodivergence is used to question self-knowledge. Access to care is mediated through gatekeeping structures that demand conformity to narrow narratives. These dynamics place trans and gender-diverse neurodivergent people at heightened risk of medical harm, social exclusion, and violence. Neurodiversity justice situates these experiences within broader regimes of bodily control rather than treating them as individual misunderstandings.
The cost of masking under gendered expectations is not only psychological. It is physiological. Chronic stress, sleep disruption, autoimmune conditions, and somatic illness are disproportionately reported by late-identified autistic and ADHD women. These outcomes are often treated as separate health issues rather than as downstream effects of sustained misalignment between person and environment. Neurodiversity justice insists on connecting these dots. Masking is not a harmless social skill. It is a survival strategy with measurable costs.
Importantly, gendered misrecognition also affects credibility. Neurodivergent women and femmes who name harm are often dismissed as overreacting or emotional. Their accounts are scrutinized for tone rather than content. This dismissal reinforces self-doubt and delays access to meaningful support. Justice-oriented frameworks must therefore address not only access to diagnosis, but whose testimony is trusted when harm is described.
Understanding the gendered dimensions of neurodivergence also clarifies why so many people arrive at identification later in life, often in the midst of crisis. The collapse that prompts recognition is not evidence of sudden decline. It is evidence that masking has reached its limit. Neurodiversity justice reframes this moment not as failure, but as information. It signals that the cost of adaptation has become unsustainable.
Racialized Neurodivergence and Punitive Systems
Race fundamentally shapes how neurodivergence is interpreted, responded to, and governed. Neurodivergent traits do not carry the same meaning in all bodies. In racialized bodies, particularly Black and Indigenous bodies, difference is far more likely to be read as threat rather than need. This is not a failure of awareness. It is the predictable outcome of systems historically designed to discipline, control, and exclude.
From early childhood, racialized neurodivergent people are exposed to punitive responses rather than supportive ones. In educational settings, behaviors associated with autism and ADHD such as sensory distress, movement, shutdowns, impulsive speech, or difficulty with authority are far more likely to trigger discipline for students of color than for white students exhibiting the same behaviors. Extensive research on school discipline demonstrates that Black students are punished more frequently and more harshly, even when controlling for behavior severity. When neurodivergence intersects with racial bias, the margin for error disappears.
This dynamic is not confined to schools. It extends into healthcare, social services, employment, and public space. Neurodivergent people of color are more likely to have their distress dismissed, their communication misinterpreted, and their needs reframed as noncompliance. In clinical settings, pain and sensory overwhelm are often minimized or attributed to behavioral issues rather than neurological difference. Requests for accommodation may be treated with suspicion. Neurodiversity justice situates these experiences within the long history of medical racism and recognizes that misrecognition is not incidental. It is systemic.
Public space represents one of the most dangerous sites of racialized neurodivergent harm. Differences in movement, speech, affect, or regulation are frequently interpreted through racialized stereotypes that frame deviation as aggression or intoxication. Neurodivergent shutdowns, meltdowns, or self-regulation behaviors can escalate rapidly in the presence of law enforcement or security personnel. There is extensive documentation of neurodivergent people of color being restrained, arrested, injured, or killed during encounters that began with misinterpretation of behavior. These outcomes are not aberrations. They are the logical consequences of systems that conflate difference with danger.
Punitive systems rely on credibility judgments. Who is believed when they say they are overwhelmed. Who is given the benefit of the doubt. Who is allowed to explain themselves. Racialized neurodivergent people are routinely denied this credibility. Their accounts are questioned. Their intentions are assumed to be malicious. Neurodiversity justice identifies credibility as a structural resource that is unevenly distributed. Without credibility, access to care, accommodation, and safety is fundamentally compromised.
The criminalization of neurodivergent behavior is often justified through narratives of responsibility and order. Individuals are told they should comply, calm down, or follow instructions, even in moments of acute distress. These expectations ignore both neurological reality and power imbalance. They also ignore evidence from crisis response research showing that coercion escalates rather than resolves distress. Neurodiversity justice rejects punitive responses not because accountability is unimportant, but because punishment consistently fails to produce safety.
Racialized neurodivergent people are also more likely to be routed into carceral systems through mental health pathways. Involuntary hospitalization, forced treatment, and institutionalization are disproportionately experienced by marginalized populations. These interventions are often framed as care, yet they rely on coercion and control. Neurodiversity justice interrogates these practices critically, recognizing that care delivered through force reproduces trauma and distrust.
Employment systems mirror these dynamics. Neurodivergent people of color face higher rates of unemployment and underemployment, not solely because of bias in hiring, but because workplaces penalize communication styles, affect, and self-advocacy that do not align with white normative standards. Disciplinary processes are often triggered more quickly, and informal protections are less accessible. When job loss occurs, it is framed as performance failure rather than as the result of systemic exclusion. Justice-oriented analysis rejects this framing and demands accountability for discriminatory design.
Understanding racialized neurodivergence also requires confronting how advocacy movements have often centered white experiences. Narratives that emphasize acceptance without addressing punishment obscure the realities faced by neurodivergent people of color. Calls for tolerance ring hollow in contexts where difference is met with violence. Neurodiversity justice insists that any movement claiming to seek justice must grapple directly with racism, policing, and state violence. Without this engagement, advocacy risks becoming another layer of erasure.
Importantly, racialized neurodivergent communities have also developed sophisticated survival strategies and forms of resistance. Mutual aid, community-based care, and informal networks often provide safety where formal systems do not. These practices are not evidence of resilience in the abstract. They are responses to exclusion. Neurodiversity justice treats them as sources of knowledge rather than as compensatory adaptations.
Class, Poverty, and the Uneven Survivability of Neurodivergence
Class shapes whether neurodivergence is survivable. It determines access to diagnosis, accommodation, healthcare, housing, legal protection, and the ability to exit harmful environments. Neurodivergent traits do not carry the same consequences in contexts of abundance as they do under conditions of scarcity. Yet much of the discourse around autism and ADHD implicitly assumes a baseline of resources that many people do not have. Neurodiversity justice insists on naming class and poverty as central forces shaping neurodivergent harm.
Diagnostic access alone reveals the depth of this disparity. Formal identification often requires time, money, insurance coverage, and familiarity with medical systems. Neurodivergent people with financial resources may obtain private evaluations, second opinions, and ongoing support. Those without resources are more likely to encounter long waitlists, gatekeeping, or dismissal. The absence of diagnosis then becomes a barrier to accommodation, creating a self-reinforcing loop. Neurodiversity justice treats this as a structural failure rather than an individual oversight.
Poverty also intensifies exposure to sensory-hostile environments. Crowded housing, unreliable transportation, noisy workplaces, and unsafe neighborhoods place continuous strain on regulation. For neurodivergent people, whose nervous systems may already be taxed by sensory input, these conditions can be overwhelming. Distress in these contexts is often interpreted as behavioral or emotional instability rather than as a rational response to environmental stress. Justice-oriented analysis reframes these reactions as signals of unmet needs rather than as deficits.
Employment precarity further compounds harm. Neurodivergent people are disproportionately represented in unstable, low-wage work that offers little flexibility and few protections. Jobs with rigid schedules, high sensory demands, and punitive attendance policies leave little room for fluctuation in energy or regulation. Missing a shift or misunderstanding an instruction can result in immediate job loss. The margin for error is narrow, and the consequences are severe. Neurodiversity justice recognizes that advice centered on disclosure or negotiation often ignores these realities and can place people at risk.
Housing insecurity represents another critical site of harm. Stable housing provides predictability, control over sensory input, and space for recovery. Housing instability removes all three. Neurodivergent people experiencing homelessness or housing precarity are subject to heightened surveillance, policing, and institutional intervention. Self-regulation strategies that might be tolerated in private become criminalized in public. Neurodiversity justice situates housing as a foundational accessibility issue rather than as a separate social concern.
Public assistance systems often exacerbate these harms. Disability benefits, food assistance, and healthcare programs are frequently designed around compliance, documentation, and periodic reassessment. Navigating these systems requires sustained executive functioning, clear communication, and tolerance for bureaucratic stress. For neurodivergent people, particularly those without support, these demands can be prohibitive. Missed paperwork or misunderstood requirements can result in loss of essential resources. Justice-oriented frameworks recognize that these systems punish difference under the guise of accountability.
Class also shapes credibility. Neurodivergent people living in poverty are more likely to have their experiences dismissed as irresponsibility or lack of effort. Their distress is moralized rather than contextualized. This moralization obscures the role of structural constraint and reinforces stigma. Neurodiversity justice challenges narratives that equate economic success with personal worth or capability. It insists that outcomes are shaped by access, not character.
The uneven survivability of neurodivergence under capitalism raises difficult questions about productivity and value. Systems that reward constant output and penalize fluctuation create conditions in which only some neurodivergent people can endure. Those who cannot are framed as failures rather than as indicators of systemic incompatibility. Neurodiversity justice reframes this incompatibility as a design problem. It asks why survival should require exhaustion, and why economic participation is contingent on self-erasure.
Importantly, class does not operate in isolation. It intersects with race, gender, disability, and citizenship to compound harm. Neurodivergent people of color living in poverty face layered forms of surveillance and punishment. Neurodivergent women without financial autonomy may remain trapped in unsafe relationships or workplaces. Undocumented neurodivergent people may avoid seeking care altogether due to fear of state contact. Justice-oriented analysis requires holding these intersections together rather than addressing them piecemeal.
Despite these constraints, neurodivergent people experiencing poverty often develop sophisticated strategies for survival. Mutual aid networks, informal care arrangements, and community-based knowledge fill gaps left by formal systems. These practices are not evidence that harm is manageable. They are evidence that people are forced to compensate for systemic neglect. Neurodiversity justice treats these strategies as forms of expertise rather than as coping mechanisms to be celebrated in isolation.
Neurodivergence is not merely a neurological reality. It is an economic one. The question is not only how neurodivergent people think or feel, but what resources they can access when systems fail them. Justice demands that this economic dimension be addressed directly, rather than obscured by narratives of resilience or personal responsibility.
